It is a cold and dark night in East Los Angeles. The streets are empty except for a few people on their way home. Then out of the shadows comes a car slowly driving down the streets. There are four young men heavily armed, just waiting for a target to come along. At a nearby house a rival gang member comes out of his home for a cigarette. One of the G's [gang member] in the car recognizes him as the man that shot one of his homies [fellow gang member] at a party the previous week. The car speeds by and the vatos [men] in the car open fire on the individual. The sounds of gunshots can be heard all around the nearby streets. He is hit once in the head and dies instantly. His wife and children hear the shots and come out to find their father lying lifeless on the ground. One man is dead, a woman is widowed, three children are now without a father, and four young men are now on the run from the law. This is what life is like inside a gang. This is their future. But gang members are not the only victims to street violence; their family, their children, their friends and loved ones, and countless of innocent by-standers are all victims to gang warfare.

In the end the life of a gang-member will be altered forever; it could be prison, it could be the memories and the side effects of the drugs, or it could even be death.

Before we can start to understand why young Chicanos (Mexican-Americans) join gangs we must first understand what a gang truly is. According to Bullet, a gang is a group formed by groups of friends and acquaintances whose main purpose is to take control of a territory, which they call a vario or barrio, which is usually where they live (Interview). Most of the time they do this to sell drugs, or just to control an area where they can feel safe and not be threatened by another gang. They fight for that territory so they can walk and feel safe.

There are several reasons why Chicanos join gangs.

f the ladder are the wanna-bes. They are not actually in a gang. They are youths who see gang life as an exciting thing, a place where they can be somebody. Wanna-bes dress like gangsters, tag their names, throw up the placa [hand signal representing a particular gang] and imitate other gang symbols. They even hang out with known gang members, but they have not yet been accepted into the gang. An entire gang is hardly seen together except at fights or at social events. What is normally seen and referred to as "the gang" is really a clique which is like a gang within a gang. It is made up of a group of associate, fringes, and wanna-be gang members who hang around a couple of veteranos.

Part of the reason I joined a gang goes way back to when I was about seven years old. First of all was the influence of the people that were in my neighborhood. As I grew up I would see them out in the streets, you know, I liked the way they dressed and I thought they where like "wow" like cool, and I wanted to be like one of those cool guys. Eventually as time went by, you know, I had problems in the family, and I had the wrong friends, I had friends that were in a gang, and because of the problems in the house I wanted to fit somewhere I wanted to feel a part of something, so that's why I joined the gang to be a part of something, and belong to something and to be accepted somewhere, to feel somehow important, to feel that I had friends, to have people with which I was able to have fun with, and for the girls. Those are the things that were somehow influential in my decision to join a gang (Bullet interview).

However it is most likely that it will be a combination of these things that will cause a person to join a gang.

On an initial investment of $2,500.00 worth of cocaine and using two

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Approximate Word count = 2680
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page double spaced)